Why academics should NOT make time for social media

If you want others to appreciate eccentricity and other forms of non-conformity, then it needs to be on ready display, which means engagement with social media. Diversity is not promoted by hiding it, because once it's encountered in the offline world, it will be resisted even more strongly -- and the perpetrators can then claim ignorance as their defence.

Steve Fuller says "on ready display ... means engagement with social media". Really? What about the free (in both senses) WorldWide Web? What about traditional publication? What about all the other cultural forms including books, cinema, and theatre? We're not short of means of ready display.

You're neglecting the fact that social media is 'meta-' to the other things you mention as offering opportunities for public display. Social media are increasingly the first port of call and hence frame of reference for how people deal with what they find in the offline world.

But your food analogy is wrong -- but in a telling way. The reason 'junk food' came to dominate was that the high-minded culinary artists and nutritionists didn't take 'fast food' seriously and hence failed to intervene in the market as it was developing. The result is that we do indeed have a segmented market -- i.e. the people who go to McDonalds and the ones who don't. Your analogy presumes that we're already there with social media vis-a-vis more verbally extended forms of communication. I'm more optimistic.

The food analogy is entirely wrong because the phrase 'junk food' is negative by definition; social media is not negative by definition because the key (or televant) word in the phrase 'social media' is 'social', which is not a bad modifier but one thst signifies complexity and requires us to approach media use through a sociological lens that draws attention to what such media afford, both in terms of opportunities and constraints; the key word in 'junk food' is 'junk', which pre-fixes the meaning of the phrase in such a way that it can only mean that this kind of food has constraints and no oportunities, ie it 'bad' by definition. And I don't think social media is bad by definition. It is where I get much research fodder!

The contention, here, is with your thesis that social media is, over all, nefarious. Your argument by analogy with junk food is fallacious for a range of reasons, including those that both Steve Fuller (above) and I have been pointing out. If argument by analogy is needed here, then I would argue that social media is more akin to public spaces such as parks, playgrounds, piazzas, and trade fairs: in essence, the agora. As with all public spaces (res publica), there are opportunities and there are constraints; there is structure and there is agency; there are push and pull factors. Which is why my own personal and academic/professional use of social medial is guided by this understanding: for me, and many others like me, social media is neither dangerous nor addictive in the way that junk food is; it is a place of public debate that affords opportunities which in turn depend on social mores of (n)etiquette to guide and model respectful interactions; it is also a place/space that requires social responsibility, self-discipline and knowledge of the medium (the ‘space’ itself), just as knowing where to go in a public park and who talk to are instrumental in learning to enjoy all that the park affords in terms of opportunities. Anyone with children will have, at some point, had this conversation as their child ventures off for the first time, alone and out of sight! But as with all public spaces, including the current one we are having this exchange on, social media is subject to the abuses or exploitations of private enterprises who advertise and sell their goods in parks and playgrounds or of drug dealers peddling their wares to vulnerable teenagers. It is in this sense that social media needs to be understood and researched through a sociological lens. As for tracking our private data, well! Ever since cash machines hit the high street, my bank has known where I am and how much I spend. Issues of data protection and privacy are in no way confined to social media use. The fact is, social media exists, and in addition to the 2 advantages you generously concede, there are many more, including those highlighted in the riposte to your article by @andymiah. My own personal engagement with social media has added to - rather than detracted from - my professional and academic networks, and like many others, I am still learning to make the most out it, despite its constraints.

Dear Julia, if social media were truly analogous to "public spaces" (parks and the like) then they wouldn't be owned by large US corporations, wouldn't require you to sign a contract to get in, wouldn't exist to generate wealth for private shareholders, and wouldn't have their own rules of censorship that are stricter and more socially conservative than the rest of society. You allow that "private enterprises ... advertise and sell their goods in parks and playgrounds" but that entails a contradiction, since your analogy already supposed that the parks themselves ARE the social media. That tangle in your analogy arises because you've confused the Worldwide Web and the Internet (which truly are like parks) with social media, which are in fact more liked "walled gardens" that private corporations have been allowed to build within the parks. These "walled gardens" are a private, profiteering encroachment on the common public good. Those who are intoxicated by the addictive plants grown in these "walled gardens" need to be given a lift up to see over the wall into the broader, free space beyond. It's academics' duty to provide that lift.